Paris vs. Beirut, All Lives Matter, Mais Nous Sommes Amis!

Merci pour votre amité, la France!

I'm not addressing the tragedy that occurred a week ago in Paris.  My love of Paris is fully documented, and the French people are the most lovely I have encountered.  No, there seems to be a petulant cry from some saying, what about our tragedy?  Why don't you care so much about us? Specifically, Beirut and Kenya.  It's because we're not white, right?  That's the only lens we see anything through, and so that's it.

The French people are, have been, and will continue to be our friends.  They have been our friends for a very long time; in fact, since before we were even a country.  They have been a long, true, dear friend of America, and friends are there for each other.  Because I am willing to sympathize with my close friends, does that mean I cannot empathize with acquaintances, or even people I do not know?  Of course not, but for our true friends, we will come over with a box of tissues and a patient ear.  And, so we sit and comfort our good friend, la France.

There is pain and suffering everywhere.  It is not that we don't care, but there is a term compassion burnout.  Well, if there isn't, there should be.  Close friends are there when we need them, as France was during 9/11, and we reciprocate now in their hour of grief.  It's what buddies do!

CB2 Pendant Drum Shade Update in the Style of Tord Boontje

This is what a half million dollars
gets you in NYC - a bathroom closet
in the dining area and faux wood particle
board kitchen.  Geez!  Oh, right, I added this to
show the original light fixture, not to complain!

I have trust fund baby taste on a public school teacher's salary.  It could easily stink, but I consider it a challenge to create custom things, close to the original, pricier versions, on a budget.  It will never be immediately gratifying, but I usually get what I want eventually.  Back in 2009, we bought our home, and it was gross, especially the kitchen.  One of the first things to get replaced was the kitchen light fixture, which was faux pink and white stained glass in one of those 1950's, upside-down tulip shapes.  The whole kitchen was a disaster, but the light I could fix right away.  CB2 had a nice, modern drum shade for, at the time, $59.95, now $69.95.  It may have been the one saving grace of the space.  Now, six-plus years later, it's become a bit dingy, and in my snazzy new kitchen, it was receding into the background.  Time for an update, but the dreamy Emil Stejnar snowball pendant goes for over a grand, so, what's a girl to do?

am I right?

Pretty close to the actual thing,

If there's an upside to the alarming pace of rental price increases in New York City, it's liquidation sales.  Yes, we've lost many an institution (F.A.O. Schwartz, Toys R' Us Times Square and the Subway Inn are some of the latest casualties), but I scored two great pairs of shoes at an ousted Aerosoles location, and today, at my local A.C. Moore craft store "relocation" sale (to an as-yet-undetermined site) I got me some sweet bling for my boring shade.  Yay, mercenary landlords!  I scored a Tord Boontje style laser cut felt border for the low, low price of $0.60, normally $3.99!  What?!?!   The downside?  I couldn't find any two in the same color, but isn't that the reason spray paint was invented?

And, I'm off!

So, first I started by spraying down the blotchy Eden pendant with bleach, then plain water, because I've learned from experience that the whole enchilada needs to get wet, or the stain will just move to the edges of where you wet it, plus, I didn't want the shade to disintegrate from remaining imbued with bleach.  Then, I grabbed my nearest can of silver spray paint, and soon all the felt borders matched.  In a fortuitous bonus, it came out looking like a French metallic silver lace bracelet by Paz Sintes that I swooned over at the Bastille Day Festivities, until I learned its price, and then, regrettably walked away.  Since the felt was self-adhesive, I just peeled of the backing and put it in place.  

So, to recap, I now have a custom shade, with faux silver lace in the style of Tord Boontje, and the update cost me: $1.20.  Eat your hearts out, hedge funders!  Unless you have the snowball, and then, call me!

Ho-hum.  And stained!

Notice the Orla Kiely knock-off design
in the right of the photo

"Inside Out" Movie Review

How many ways was this movie made for me?  Amy Poehler, check.  Pixar, check.  Movie about an 11 year-old girl who moves far away from her friends, check.  Made. For. Me.

Dad's emotions, with Anger front and center.  His brain
looks like the panel from a sports show.

See, I moved from my home at 11, also.  It's a tough time in a girl's life to begin with.  Add to that the puberty button, and it becomes something of a mess.  Goofball Island, Friendship Island, even Family Island crumble.  Oh, how I related to this movie.  Riley cried in front of her new classmates; I spoke with a Rhode Island accent.  The entire class was mocking me when I said that a noun was a "person, place, thing, or idear".  "Idear!  Idear!"; I can still hear their voices.  Did anyone else notice that Riley, the daughter, has Joy running the controls, while Mom has Sadness, and Dad has Anger in charge?  How true, how true.

Oh, Bing Bong, it's so sad to say goodbye.

Watching this as a mother of an 8 year-old girl put me over the edge of reason, man.  Spoiler alert, when Bing Bong martyred himself as a forgotten memory, that was my first cry of the movie.  Tootie Pie has pretty much abandoned her belief in Santa Claus; the Easter Bunny and Tooth Fairy can't be far behind.  The second tear-jerker moment was when Joy relinquished control to Sadness, because what Riley really needed was to express her sadness.  That's something I'm still learning.

Up until now, my favorite Pixar movie was "Finding Nemo".  The irrepressibly upbeat Dory was my hero.  She always found the bright side of things, but maybe that's because she had short term memory.  Maybe that's the key to happiness.  Riley and I don't suffer, or enjoy, the same affliction, and so sadness affects us, because we remember.  Ernest Hemingway said, "Happiness in intelligent people is the rarest thing I know"; I swore I'd be different.  I could be smart and joyous, but, alas, it's an unattainable goal.  I'm a mother, and Sadness is at the helm of the ship.  There is no other alternative.  But...Joy is her right hand woman, and I feel like the two of them can come to some sort of arrangement where Sadness doesn't interfere too much with the warm, happy, core memories.

The boss of Mom's brain?  Sadness.  Oh, dear.

Mermaid Costume Tutorial

This was a lot of work for very little payoff, but I guess that's the theme song of my life.  Originally, in the grandiose, what-was-I-thinking phase of the birthday planning, I imagined Tootie Pie wearing this at her 2-hour party (one hour of which was spent in the pool) and photographing her with each of her party guests.  Ya know, so each thank you card could be personalized?  Because, the only thing more tedious than dusting off my never-that-great-to-begin-with Photoshop "skills" to make a thank you card is making twenty different thank you cards.  So, that's not what happened.

 What did happen is, after many an unhappy fitting, and glitter everywhere, we used this costume exactly once, for her thank you card.  Oh, and the backdrop was used the same number of times, but that is now "art" in our basement stairs.   

All you need for this project is sequinned stretch fabric and tulle.  I followed this tutorial for the skirt.  I love the speech bubbles on the photo where her daughter was complaining that her arms were too tired.  Adorable.  For the top, I used the pattern here and followed the tutorial here.  Rather than sew it to a leotard, I sewed elastic to it, since it was not intended to be worn long nor in public.

In the photos, she is wearing a Strawberry Shortcake wig, bedazzled with a purchased pressed paper starfish that I added dimension to with a glue gun, and then dry brush painted it with gold paint.

In the card, I added waves using Photoshop, and some text.  All in all, I think the end result came out quite nice.

Back lit Emil Stenjar Knock-off Starburst Mirror DIY Update

Well, it took nearly a year to create enough milk jug flowers to cover the largest spokes of my Emil Stenjar wannabe mirror, but I did it.  A year of tracing, cutting, heating and pushing the cookie cutters through plastic, and around 70 glue stick batons later, I think it has its own, cool thing going on.  I also reinforced the linkage strips with hot glue, since the tape wasn't holding.  Finally, the lights fell off the back, but I will fix that when I add flowers to the smaller spokes.  Here she is, in her partial glory.

Buddy the Elf! What's your Favorite Color?

I just like smiling.  Smiling's my favorite!

I figured I better not let my last post lead off this blog for long, just like I don't let the horrible parts of my work keep me down for long.  I'll switch gears completely and show you how I created my very own Buddy the Elf costume.

Wearing their ugly sweaters.
My husband's includes lights.

Next year's ugly sweater?

We had Ugly Sweater day at school.  I've made ugly sweaters before, including one that lit up!  But, brainstorming out another hideous sweater, I came across the style that makes the wearer look like an elf.  And then, elf on the brain, that turned into me recreating the hero of one of my favorite films, Elf. Everything about that film is right up my alley, from the North Pole aesthetic, to the innocent in the city, to the word "purply".  It's perfect!

T-shirt with puffy black fabric paint
"placard" and yellow "Scandanavian"
designs, alternately glittered gold.

So, I bought one t-shirt, two rectangles of green felt, one each yellow and white, and 5 black.  I already had black and yellow puffy fabric paint and gold glitter and tights, so this was far cheaper than my foray into Elsa territory.  I started with the shirt, drawing a line down the center, then spreading each one out to the corners at the bottom to imitate the Nordic jacket Buddy wears exclusively.  Then I drew Christmasy decorations around the placard, and glittered every other one.  Because I thought originally I wear them the same way as the cotton headed ninny muggins, coat tails were a must, so I cut two rectangles from one sheet of green felt, and curved the outer edges, to cover my elfin tushie.  I cut from the white felt two collar shaped pieces and whip stitched them to the neck line.

Traced a plate to create the cone hat.

Better view of the hat

For the accessories, I cut a roundish shape from the remaining piece of green felt to make the hat.  From the yellow, I cut out a band for the hat, and finished it with a white feather.  Also from the yellow felt, I cut a belt buckle, and from one piece of black felt, I made a belt by cutting it lengthwise in thirds and whip stitching them together.

The template that I eyeballed
for my booties

That left the booties, my favorite part.  I've always wanted to make shoes, for real, like Irish gillies or the kind that the insane folk at Ye Olde Renaissance Faire wear.  I modified this pattern from About.com.  I didn't make the bottom, I just placed the tops over my shoes.  It happened that an 8 1/2 x 11" square of felt just fits a size 8 1/2 shoe when you cut out two pieces per foot!  Happy coincidence.  I whip stitched them together and placed them over my footwear and voila!  In the end, I threw on a pair of yellow shorts, even though I put a pair of leggings underneath them.  Can't be too safe from the easily offended (at least, by teachers, certainly not by each other, whose behavior is beyond reprehensible) population that I "serve".

Oh, it's not a costume, I'm an elf.  Well, technically
I'm a human, but I was raised by elves.